Kim Beazley (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Foreign Affairs. I refer the foreign minister to page 83 of volume 4 of the Cole inquiry’s report, which states:

By June 2004 DFAT was aware that AWB’s prices had included ... transportation, that AWB ... paid money to a Jordanian trucking company ... and that AWB had conceded that the Jordanian company might of its own volition have provided kickbacks to the regime.

Minister, given that Commissioner Cole has concluded that your department knew these facts by June 2004, why in September 2004 did you direct our acting ambassador in Washington to ‘reject the allegations entirely that the AWB had paid kickbacks to Saddam Hussein’s regime’? Minister, why did you seek to deceive the Americans just prior to our own Australian elections?

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